[p. 67] Governor Palin has stated publicly that she and her family feared Trooper Wooten. Yet the evidence presented has been inconsistent with such claims of fear. The testimony from Trooper Wheeler, who was part of her security detail from the start, was that shortly after elected to office, she ordered a substantial reduction in manpower in her personal protection detail in both Anchorage and Juneau, an act that is inconsistent with a desire to avoid harm from Trooper Wooten or others. Moreover, assuming that Trooper Wooten was ever inclined to attack Governor Palin or a family member, logic dictates that getting him fired would accomplish nothing to eliminate the potential for harm to her or her family. On the contrary, it might just precipitate some retaliatory conduct on his part. Causing Wooten to loose his job would not have de-escalated the situation, or provided her or her family with greater security.
Finally, it is noteworthy that in almost every contact with subordinate employees, Mr. Palin's comments were couched in terms of his desire to see Trooper Wooten fired for reasons that had nothing to do with fear. His comments were always couched in terms that he was a bad Trooper, that he was not a good recruiting image for AST, that his discipline amounted to nothing more than a slap on the wrist, that nothing had happened to him following the administrative investigation, and so forth.
McCain-Palin: Lacking evidence to support the original Monegan allegation, the Legislative Council seriously overreached, making a tortured argument to find fault without basis in law or fact.
TRUTH: On the flip....
TRUTH:
(A) Originally, Monegan made no allegation. He became incresingly skeptical of Palin's motives over time. Anchorage Daily News:
Monegan said he wasn't sure at first, but has come to believe that his failure to heed pressure from Palin, her husband and others to sack state Trooper Mike Wooten is what cost him his job as public safety commissioner.
(B) The first public allegations came from blogger, former Republican state representative, and former independent candidate for governor Andrew Halcro. He did not claim that Monegan was fired solely because of the refusal to fire Wooten, but that that was one of several principled stands that cost Monegan his job. Halcro, in July:
Walt Monegan got fired for all of the wrong reasons. Walt Monegan got fired because he had the audacity to tell Governor Palin no, when apparently nobody is allowed to say no to Governor Palin.
Monegan said no, he couldn't cut his budget because his State Troopers were already being stretched to the limit and public safety suffering. He said no, he couldn't cut his budget because fuel costs for planes, boats and patrol vehicles soaring, while crime in rural Alaska was putting more demands on the Troopers transportation system.
But more alarming than any budget battle, Monegan said no to firing a State Trooper who had divorced Governor Palin's sister because the guy was being maliciously hounded by Palin's family.
And not just that; Monegan's firing came after his Colonel had to reprimand the governor's office for meddling in department personnel affairs.
Branchflower Report:
I find that, although Walt Monegan's refusal to fire Trooper Michael Wooten was not the sole reason he was fired by Governor Sarah Palin, it was likely a contributing factor to his termination as Commissioner of Public Safety.
(C) The Legislative Council did not over-reach. It simply accepted and released the report prepared by a highly-regarded career investigator, Stephen Branchflower.
(D) Branchflower found that:
Finding Number One
For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides
"The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."
[Emphasis added.]
The "tortured argument to find fault without basis in law or fact" consisted of just over 4 pages detailing the applicable laws, including definition of terms (pp. 48-52), followed by 14 pages detailing the facts of the case, covering 18 separate events (pp 52-65).
At the end of this, Branchflower concluded:
Governor Sarah Palin
The policy underlying Alaska's Ethics Act is to discourage executive branch employees from acting upon personal interests in the performance of their public responsibilities and to avoid conflicts of interest in the performance of duty. The Act makes clear that compliance with the code of ethics creates a burden on each executive branch employee that is personal in nature.
Compliance with the code of ethics is not optional. It is an individual responsibility imposed by law, and any effort to benefit a personal interest through official action is a violation of that trust. As explained above, the term "benefit' is very broadly defined, and includes anything that is to the person's advantage or personal self-interest. The term "personal interest" as used in the Ethics Act means any interest held by the public officer or the public officer's immediate family, including a sibling such as Governor Palin's sister Molly, Molly's children, her father Mr. Heath or any other family member. AS 39.52.960(11).
As defined in AS 39.52.960(14), the term "official action" means "advice, participation, or assistance, including, for example, a recommendation, decision, approval, disapproval, vote, or other similar action, including inaction, by a public officer."
The evidence supports the conclusion that Governor Palin, at the least, engaged in "official action" by her inaction if not her active participation or assistance to her husband in attempting to get Trooper Wooten fired [and there is evidence of her active participation]. She knowingly, as that term is defined in the above cited statutes, permitted Todd Palin to use the Governor's office and the resources of the Governor's office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired. Her conduct violated AS 39.52.110(a) of the Ethics Act. That statute provides that:
"The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."
Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired. She had the authority and power to require Mr. Palin to cease contacting subordinates,but she failed to act.
Such impermissible and repeated contacts create conflicts of interests for subordinate employees who must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior's displeasure and the possible consequences of such displeasure. This was one of the very reasons the Ethics Act was promulgated by the Legislature. That such a conflict of interest arises in such circumstances was best summarized by John Bitney,who summed it up when he testified:
MR. BITNEY: I seem to recall that I said "I'll check it out," or "let me see what I can do." I mean, you know, that was, you know. My recollection of my own sense was, you know, "here's a friend and" if you will "the Governor's husband", who's got into office who's got a problem, you know, and someone that seems to be a serious problem for him, from my perspective. You know, when the First Gentleman comes into your office and says you got a problem, you sort of feel compelled to look into it and see if something can be done.
In this case, Governor Palin has declined to provide an interview. An interview would have assisted everyone to better understand her motives and perhaps help explain why she was so apparently intent upon getting Trooper Wooten fired in spite of the fact she knew he had been disciplined following the Administrative Investigation. She also knew that he had been permitted to keep his job, and that the disciplinary investigation was closed and could not be reopened. Yet she allowed the pressure from her husband, to try to get Trooper Wooten fired, to continue unabated over a several month-period of time.
That is what the McCain-Palin campaign calls "a tortured argument... without basis in law or fact". In the real world, it's called meticulous, thorough, and professional--things that McCain-Palin ("fully vetted") apparently know nothing about.
It is vitally important not to let this matter be buried, or spun. There is nothing here to vindicate Palin, and everything to condemn her for violating her public trust, in the same narrow-minded vindictive fashion that Republican presidents from Nixon onward have repeatedly done over and over and over again.
Because the report was so thorough, and meticulously refrained from over-reaching and anything even remotely akin to sensationalism, the McCain campaign hopes to quickly bury it. But it is an utterly damning investigation, and we should not allow it to be ignored or forgotten in the remaining days of this campaign--or afterwards, eitehr, until Palin has been held officially accountable for her actions. |
